The War Within (27 page)

This option would "dramatically but quietly" increase the quantity and reach of the embedding/training program. The upside was that Iraqis would be more visibly in the lead and feel more empowered. The risks were that Maliki might prove too sectarian or the government too dysfunctional to overcome its divisions.

* * *

O'Sullivan had concluded that the "double down" option represented the best, if riskiest, path ahead. But she didn't take sides in the memo. The president would decide.

* * *

Satterfield was less than impressed with O'Sullivan's memo on the four constructs. It represented what he called the

"Meghan-ization" of the processótaking a vast, complex issue and attempting to reduce it to the perfect PowerPoint presentation, a jumble of strategic assumptions and impediments, key features, advantages and disadvantages and risks that, if phrased just right, might unravel the Iraq knot. O'Sullivan, he thought, seemed to favor continual fine-tuning. Satterfield thought they needed a policy that was sustainable and practical. He had spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill, and it was clear to him that the administration was on shaky ground with members of both parties, not to mention with the American public. Whatever strategy they settled on, it had to make sense. And it had to have some chance of success.

* * *

"Don't talk about winning!" one key Republican leader implored Hadley. It sounded arrogant, triumphant and overconfident. "Stop talking about success!" another said.

Hoping to accommodate the administration's Republican allies, Hadley told the White House speechwriters, "Let's tone this down." Out would come "victory," out would come "win," out would come "success" when referring to Iraq.

But the president wouldn't hear of it. "We don't talk about victory here," he said when he saw one draft. "I want to say 'victory.' I want to say 'win.' I want to say 'success.'"

The words went back in.

Some leading Republicans, even Bush's friends, argued that the American public was tuning out the president. "The American people don't believe that we're going to win," one Republican told him, "or that there is victory. Or at least they don't believe in winning and victory the way they seemed to be defined in '03 and '04. So, Mr. President, they think by your continuing on about winning and victory, they think you're out of touch."

"I'm not out of touch," Bush replied. "I know how difficult it is. I talk about how difficult it is. But I've got to make it clear for our troops, for Maliki, for the Iraqi people, that I am committed to winning and to victory. I understand that for some people back here, they don't like to hear it. And they think it's sort of out of touch. But I've got other audiences I have to address."

C

Chapter 20

F
rom the vice president's suite in the West Wing, Cheney let the O'Sullivan strategy review go forward. He was making no attempt to lead it or curtail it, and no one from his office was attending her meetings. He knew that Rumsfeld had told the president he would resign as defense secretary if the Republicans lost either the House or Senate. Beyond that, Cheney did not know the president's plans.

From the beginning, Cheney had been a steamroller in pushing war with Iraq as the only way to deal with Saddam Hussein. But Cheney never had quite the overwhelming influence his reputation suggested. As
Washington Post
reporters Barton Gellman and Jo Becker wrote in their Pulitzer Prizeñwinning 2007 series on the vice president,

"Cheney is not, by nearly every inside account, the shadow president of popular lore." Stephen F. Hayes, the author of
Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President,
a biography written with Cheney's extensive cooperation, agreed that everything Cheney does is either directed or approved by the president.

By the fall of 2006, the influence of Cheney and Rumsfeld was eroding. The two had the longest-lasting friendship in the Bush administration, dating back 37 years to 1969, when Rumsfeld gave Cheney his first government job in the Nixon administration. Five years later, when Rumsfeld was the White House chief of staff in the Ford White House, he selected Cheney as his chief deputy. When Rumsfeld became Ford's defense secretary the next year, Cheney was elevated to White House chief of staff at the age of 34. He had a calm, reassuring manner and seemed old even in his youth.

Cheney later served 10 years as the congressman from Wyoming, his home state, rising to become the number two House Republican leader. In 1989, he became secretary of defense for the first President Bush. Cheney had strongly recommended Rumsfeld in 2000 to become George W. Bush's secretary of defense. Since then, Cheney and Rumsfeld had operated as a kind of iron wall on defense and war policy that no one could get around. At every turn, Cheney praised and defended Rumsfeld, publicly and privately and personally to the president. He was Rumsfeld's biggest fan and made no secret of it. As vice president, Cheney technically outranked the secretary of defense. But Rumsfeld was like the older brother.

Cheney advised the president in private, separately from the rest of the Bush team. The president liked it that way.

When I asked Bush about Cheney, he said, "I meet with him once a week, and we have private conversationsÖ. He doesn't talk about it, and neither do I." Neither apparently realized how this private channel hindered the full airing of views and alternatives within the National Security Council. No one could challenge Cheney because no one knew exactly what he said to Bush. And intentionally or unintentionally, the president's decisions carried the implied blessing of the vice president.

Cheney liked to half joke that he was the only person in the West Wing who could not be fired because his name had been on the ballot in 2000 and 2004. But he knew that a vice president could be cut off by the president, excluded from meetings and policy debate.

Cheney calibrated his public words and actions so that he was seen as an extension and an echo of Bush. He served as the president's messenger. In 2004, when the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal was exposed, Rumsfeld twice submitted a resignation letter. The president dispatched Cheney to the Pentagon to talk to his old mentor. Sitting in the secretary of defense's office, which he had occupied from 1989 to 1993, Cheney made the case for staying.

We're not going to accept your resignation, Cheney said. Abu Ghraib was a problem, but it wasn't appropriate for Rumsfeld to shoulder the entire burden. You shouldn't lose your job because of a handful of out-of-control soldiers, he said. You are too valuable.

It took an hour, but Rumsfeld agreed to stay. "Look, if I ever get to be a liability here," he told Cheney, "I'm out of here. The president needs to know I'm prepared to move on."

* * *

Bush later told me that he had realized for quite some time that he needed "new personnel, including the secretary of defense, as well as the commander on the ground. Secretary Rumsfeld was also sending signals: 'New eyes, new ears.' I remember he said that at one point in time. And Don Rumsfeld is a professional. And Don Rumsfeld is a friend of mine. He is a person that has been around a long time. And as you begin to think new, it's more than just new strategy. It's new personnel."

Rumsfeld had told Bush, "Mr. President, maybe you need fresh eyes on the target."

"I was beginning to smell the problem politically at home," Bush recalled. "The politics of the moment, obviously, wasn't driving me, because of the strategic implications of this. On the other hand, I also know that the president's got to work hard to give people a sense of hope in the missionÖPart of making sure the change of strategy became a change in people's minds was to also change some of the players, some of the personnel."

Bush realized that replacing Rumsfeld would be a delicate matter. After all, a major election was looming. And it was imperative to have a secretary of defense and maintain the chain of command during a war. He didn't believe he could send signals that he wanted to replace Rumsfeld without a replacement standing by.

How did you decide you needed to get a new secretary of defense? I asked him.

"It was evolutionary," Bush said. "When I decided on a new strategy, I knew that in order to make the strategy work, for people to understand that it was new, there had to be new implementers of the strategy."

"It'd be good to put that phrase" in the book, Hadley said to me.

"Steve would like you to use the word 'evolutionary,'" Bush said, laughing. "Just remember this. Once you make up your mind you need a new strategy, in order to convince others that the strategy is in fact newópeople that really aren't aware of the military terminologyónew people to implement the new strategy is an exclamation point on new strategy."

Bush said that Rumsfeld had realized this, and he insisted there had been no angry interchanges. He clearly had wanted as quiet and soft a landing for Rumsfeld as possible. "Don Rumsfeld is one of the true professionals who understands Washington about as well as anybody, that you serve at the pleasure of the president, and there's nothing personal."

The president said Rumsfeld didn't even have to say he would resign. "All the people who work for me, I have their resignation letter anytime I wantÖI'm the kind of person that if I lose confidence, and need to, I will ask them to move on."

* * *

In early November, the president told Rice that he had decided to replace Rumsfeld and was going to talk to Bob Gates about the job. Gates, 63, a 26-year veteran of the CIA, had been a key member of the first Bush's national security team, serving as deputy national security adviser under Brent Scowcroft and later as CIA director.

Rice was relieved and said she thought Gates was terrific. When she had served on the NSC staff from 1989 to 1991, Gates had run the deputies committee brilliantly. Somewhat playfully, she reminded the president that Gates, a Ph.D.

in Russian and Soviet history, had been a hard-liner at the end of the Cold War, knowing that that would enhance Bush's view of him. The biggest problem would be getting Gates to accept, she said. For the last four years, Gates had been president of Texas A&M University and he had told her that when he left Texas, he and his wife, Becky, were heading back to Washington state, which they loved, as quickly as they could. Mr. President, Rice said, the only way to get him may be to appeal to his patriotism.

* * *

How did you pick Gates as the new defense secretary? I asked the president later.

Bush said that a friend he had gone to college with, whom he declined to identify, had first made the suggestion.

According to the president, his friend said, "You know, have you ever thought about Gates being the secretary of defense? He's an impressive guy."

The friend had met Gates at Texas A&M. "So, I said, 'That's interesting,'" the president recalled. "And thought about it, and then called Hadley. And the reason why it was interesting is that Bob Gates had done an amazing job at Texas A&M, managing a big institution, which also happens to have, interestingly enough, a military component.

Secondly, he understands Washington, D.C. Thirdly, he'd be a fresh set of eyes to look at the problem. And fourthly, curiously enough, he was on the Baker-Hamilton study group."

I asked Bush if he had consulted his father on the decision, as Gates had been his father's CIA director and deputy national security adviser.

"I don't think I needed to because I've heard my dad talk about Gates a lot in the past," he said. "Admires him a lot.

Oh, look. This whole A&M thing. Dad is involved with Texas A&M." The elder Bush's presidential library and museum were on the A&M campus, and he "loved having Gates at Texas A&M," Bush said. "And was effusive about Gates's leadership at Texas A&M. No, I didn't need to talk to him."

Gates would be a good choice, Hadley agreed. They had known each other for 32 years, dating back to the last days of the Nixon administration, when they had been junior staffers on the NSC.

In 2005, the White House had tried to recruit Gates to become the first director of national intelligence. He had met with the president's senior staff at the White House, had a string of discussions with them and exchanged letters about the extent of the authority he would have. But they never brought President Bush into the conversations to close the deal. When Gates declined the job, Hadley seemed surprised and a little upset. Gates privately joked back at Texas A&M that the White House could have taken a lessen from a car dealer, because they had let him "off the lot without a sale, without having it in their pocket."

Gates was convinced that he had burned whatever bridges he might have with the administration. "I will never get any other call from these people," Gates had told his wife, Becky. "I'm safe."

And yet now, in late October 2006, the White House had come calling again. Hadley reached Gates at home.

"Would you consider becoming secretary of defense?" Hadley asked.

This time, Gates asked no questions. He didn't hem and haw. He had always wanted to lead State or Defense. And with kids dying in two wars, he wondered how he could he say no.

"Yes," he told Hadley, he'd be interested.

It was a short conversation, and after he hung up he sat slightly stunned. My wife is going to kill me, he thought.

They had always vowed to return to their home in Washington state as soon as possible.

"Gates is interested," Hadley reported to Bush.

"Follow up on it," the president said.

A couple days later Josh Bolten, the White House chief of staff, called to make sure Gates was really serious. He was. "We need to get you together with the president," Bolten said, and they agreed that Gates would have a private dinner with the president on Sunday, November 12. But Bolten called back to say the president wanted to do it sooner, and the meeting was moved to November 5 at the Crawford ranch.

Gates consulted with only one person about the jobóformer President George H. W. Bush. Gates had worked for him, and they belonged to one of the most exclusive clubs in the U.S. governmentóformer CIA directors. After he explained Hadley's call, Gates said, "You can't tell a soul. But do you think I should do this?"